ATLANTA | Sporting grins and Starfleet name tags with the slogan “Live long and prosper,” 20 business and community leaders from Camden County lobbied Tuesday for Georgia to become the home to a commercial space port.

They may have seemed a little spacey if lawmakers had not had breakfast that morning with a completely different group of executives from some of the state’s 838 aerospace companies that provide 85,000 jobs. Neither group knew of the other’s plans, which may illustrate how big Georgia’s $50 billion aerospace industry is.

While that includes giants like Gulfstream Aerospace, Lockheed Martin and Delta Air Lines, it also includes start-ups like Atlanta-based Generation Orbit Launch Services that seeks to launch small, commercial satellites from airplanes starting in 2016. It helps that Georgia Tech produces more aerospace engineers than any school in the country.

“We’re not as well known as agriculture and some of the other big industries,” said Steve Justice, director of the Georgia Center of Innovation for Aerospace.

The center hosted the breakfast as one way to spread the reputation.

“This is an opportunity to get industry with our state leaders to get that message across to them,” he said.

The Camden County leaders say the salt marshes on the Southeast Georgia coast offer another asset to the industry as a commercial space port by being sparsely populated and near the ocean. They say they’ve received strong interest from SpaceX, a 12-year-old company that’s already launched three commercial rockets, delivering cargo to the International Space Station.

It came up in every conversation the group had with political leaders and agency officials.

“We’ve been discussing the space port to let them know of the exciting opportunities,” said Bert Guy, a St. Marys attorney.

However, they didn’t ask the state to put any money or incentives into the space port’s development or attracting companies.

“It will happen in time,” said Charlie Smith, CEO of Cumberland Financial Group.

But the community leaders are asking the state to build a technical college on 30 donated acres in Kingsland to be ready to prepare space port workers. It’s also needed to train workers on the nuclear submarines at Kings Bay Naval Base.

When Gov. Nathan Deal presented his budget earlier during the session, he had left out the requested $16 million to build the campus for Altamaha Tech. State Rep. Jason Spencer, R-Woodbine, said later he believes the money will be in the budget that is ultimately adopted.

The group also said a new welcome center is needed at Exit 1 that would snare tourists who could fill seats in local restaurants and beds in local motels.

Sen. William Ligon, R-Brunswick, said the county’s annual lobbying trips are paying off, but just now yet.

“The technical school and the welcome center and the space port, they’re all on the radar in Atlanta,” he said. “We’re obviously having budget constraints.”